Strick Speaks

The Los Angeles Times blog, Culture Monster, has an exit profile with LA MoCA’s Jeremy Strick as he tries to explain, and defend, his record at the museum. Reading between the lines, one thing seems clear in the whole MoCA saga is that the boom times allowed the museum to run on a museum’s version of credit. That is, they put all their money in the shows and hoped it would generate contributions as they grew bigger:

“MOCA had a chronic deficit,” he said. “It had a financial model that didn’t work. There were times when we were very successful. We raised a lot of money, more than many institutions in this city, but the kind of major endowment gifts that we needed eluded us.”

Although Strick has been characterized as a lavish spender, he said the museum ran on “a shoestring” while organizing exhibitions that traveled to museums with much bigger budgets. “We put everything we had into creating the best program in the world,” he said. [ . . . ]

“As recently as last spring, there was a good possibility that the museum would move forward with a renovation and expansion of the Geffen Contemporary,” he said of the museum’s vast auxiliary space in Little Tokyo. “That project could have had a positive impact on our future. But as the economy changed, the conversation became very different. I could see that if we were going to get to the resolution we needed, it would probably be best for everyone if I were to go. But I wanted to see this process through, get MOCA to a point where I could comfortably leave.”